The Bay of Naples

Alan Clews

When ordinary people are caught up in huge events beyond their control, the effect on their lives can be devastating. This is what happens to Franco, Gina and Miller at the beginning of the Second World War when Franco is interned because he is an Italian. Alan Clews writes with remarkable insight and pathos about the destruction of three lives and the slow rebuilding of two of them. A book that shocks and comforts simultaneously.

Extract

On the night of the sixth of September 1940, according to the Paisley Express, a man caused a breach of peace in the cafe. The item, in the following day's paper, was barely six lines long. It didn't give the man's name, simply said that there had been a disturbance and a man had been arrested. He was taken briefly to Gilmour Street jail but no charges were preferred. It was a neutral, unremarkable little item, in bold type, just one half of a dozen in a narrow column running down the right hand side of the second page. There was nothing in it that would catch or hold your eye.

Parallels